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In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio

(newslttrs.com)
286 points spzb | 1 comments | 28 Mar 25 22:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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coreyh14444 ◴[31 Mar 25 10:49 UTC] No.43533429[source]▶
I definitely had cassette based games on the TRS-80, but most of the "wireless" transmission in my youth was via BASIC printed in the back of computer magazines. You had to type in the entire app yourself. I did this for basically every app they listed. Sometimes it was like tax prep software, but I didn't care, even though I was like 9 at the time. Yes, it took a very long time. Yes, you could easily introduce typos and bugs.
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section_me ◴[31 Mar 25 12:27 UTC] No.43534190[source]▶
The post man always bent our magazine and pushed it in the cat flap making the included disk useless (even though it was clearly marked "DO NOT BEND!"), so I remember having to type everything out and sometimes correct the typos introduced into the print version. Fun times.
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ztetranz ◴[31 Mar 25 16:52 UTC] No.43537123[source]▶
Floppy disks DO NOT BEND!

Oh yes they do.

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1. jandrese ◴[31 Mar 25 18:11 UTC] No.43537942[source]▶
At least the 5 1/4 disks did. 3 1/2 disks did not like it at all. As long as you didn't crease anything the 5 1/4s would usually still work. The data wasn't especially dense on those (if you could see magnetic fields the patches would have been large enough to be visible to the naked eye) so the could take some abuse. At least until the magnetic coating started flaking off.